(Welcome to a special series on GrowingUpAustin.com, A Lithuanian Story – All the Way From Texas. I am traveling to Lithuania this summer to teach storytelling at A.P.P.L.E., an education conference that I first taught at almost twenty years ago. The new conference is fully of mystery and adventure. The first conference gave me stories I have been telling ever since. So, I decided to write about the trips here. If you have just joined, here is a summary of the posts. I’ll return to writing about hiking, live music and art for Austin kids when I get back in July. Information is always available at AustinKidsHike.com (hiking), AustinKidsDance.com (live music) and AustinKidsDraw.com (art).)

There is so much I want to tell you.

But, there are times to write about what is happening and other times to get busy making it happen.

In my day job as a project manager, I would say that this class I’m teaching is a high risk. I’m teaching storytelling, a personal and language-based topic, to students of a different culture and who don’t speak my language. It’s a new class, teaching isn’t my day job and it’s not like I have an MFA in storytelling either.

But, some of the accomplishments I’m most proud of are ones that didn’t make logical sense. There is adventure in doing something that might seem like a bad idea. And I’ve been doing it every day and late into the night for a while now. I want it to make it great.

Which is why I haven’t been posting. I haven’t forgotten about y’all. I just need to finish this class first. And go on an anniversary vacation with my sweetie during which I’m NOT going to work on the class. Those two things. Which I hope will both happen before I get on the plan to Lithuania in just a few weeks.